Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) will announce Thursday a house resolution asking the Justice Department to investigate the college football Bowl Championship Series (BCS) for possible restraint of trade violations.

Doesn’t the Justice Department have enough calls for inquiries to ignore already?

Anyway, Abercrombie doesn’t think it’s fair for the big conferences to keep all the moolah.

… Abercrombie says the BCS, “restricts not just the opportunity to compete for the title, but access to the more than $185-million in post-season revenue to 66 teams in the six largest athletic conferences and Notre Dame, and denies the opportunity to 53 other Division I-A colleges and universities.”

I assume from that quote that a four school playoff wouldn’t satisfy the guy.

The topper is the snarky conclusion.

… Abercrombie is graduate of Union College, Simpson is a Utah State alum and Westmoreland never finished college though took classes at Georgia State. None of those are BCS schools, though one has to wonder if Abercrombie would feel the same way if his home state University of Hawaii had not gotten crushed by BCS power Georgia. [Emphasis added.]

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UPDATE:Here’s a link to the AP story. It’s worth citing for another dumbass comment from Rep. Abercrombie:

“Who elected these NCAA people? Who are they to decide who competes for the championship?” Abercrombie said at a press conference Thursday on Capitol Hill, gripping a souvenir University of Hawaii football.

The NCAA has nothing to do with the BCS, moron.

I can think of another “who elected these people?” comment that’s more appropriate here.

Check out this witty repartee between Saban and Birmingham News sportswriter Ian Rapoport:

Me: (The real questions) “How are you going to handle the numbers and when do you start to worry about it?”

Saban: (Getting a little loud… What, Saban worry?) “I’m not worried about them. It’ll all work out. I mean, the whole thing has a solution to every issue. You don’t put yourself in a position where you don’t know what’s coming, then have to take it in the chops.” (“Chops” is such a dad word. Not that there is anything wrong with that) “Aiight? We know how it has to be managed, and it will be managed.”

(Pause)

Saban:“And you don’t need to call me and ask me to write a column for you, and I won’t call you and ask you how to manage our numbers. How’s that?”

Me: (Deal! But when when did I suggest how to manage the numbers? If he did ask… I digress.) “I don’t even have a calculator.” (Can’t do math without one of those.)

Saban: (The smile returns.) “You don’t need one to do this.”

Me: (Throwing the hands up in the air.) “So you’re not going to tell us?”

Saban:“I’m not going to tell you what?” (That exit is looking mighty welcoming now.) “It’s none of your business. Aiight? And don’t give me this stuff about the fans need to know, because they don’t need to know.”

Nice. The thing is, Saban’s probably right. ‘Bama fans don’t really care how he gets to 85 (check out some of the comments after the post).

Paul Johnson asks what sounds like a fair question about his version of the triple option:

“We played 30 some BCS schools when we were at Navy,” Johnson said. “If it worked at Navy, why wouldn’t it work here?”

So how well did it work at Navy? Here’s Navy’s record against BCS conference opponents over the last five seasons:

2007: 3-2, 37.6 ppg

2006: 3-3, 22.2 ppg

2005: 1-4, 25.6 ppg

2004: 3-1, 29.8 ppg

2003: 1-3, 25.5 ppg

Overall, that translates into an 11-13 record, and a 28 ppg average. Both of which are certainly credible marks, considering the type of athlete Navy put on the field during that time.

During that time, Johnson’s teams went 4-3 against the ACC, but that’s a little misleading, as all four wins came against Duke.

He’s certainly going to be able to deploy better players at Tech than he did at Navy (particularly on defense), but he’s also going to see more BCS-caliber defenses than he did before, too. Depth, as it usually is, will be the key – which doesn’t bode well for Tech’s chances in ’08.

Hawaii gets around $4.4 million for its Sugar Bowl appearance whipping, a record payout for a non-BCS conference school. Each member of its conference receives a little over $400K. In comparison, the SEC receives $17 million.

Meanwhile, Michael Adams has been told to “talk to the hand” by another NCAA committee, the Task Force on Commercial Activities in Intercollegiate Athletics, which chair had this to say about Adams’ fabulous playoff proposal: “There was no sentiment within the group for focusing on postseason football issues, and thus I do not expect that subject to come up again in any significant way..” Not surprisingly, Adams was unavailable for comment about this.

Here’s the thing. The SEC received twice the payout from the Sugar Bowl than the WAC did; you’ve also got to figure that the TV revenues that the SEC gets paid during the regular season dwarfs what the WAC earns by several orders of magnitude. Toss in this:

… However, Spanier doesn’t think there will be change to the BCS format anytime soon. “I think it highly unlikely that the ‘plus one’ concept will be explored by the BCS at this time, since the conferences and (their) member universities are committed to our current television contracts, which run for a few more years,” Spanier wrote.

The BCS will be entering its third year of a four-year agreement with Fox. ABC has a separate contract with the Rose Bowl through the 2014 game. The biggest plus-one opponents remain the Pacific-10 and the Big Ten, because of their relationship with the Rose Bowl.

Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford, the BCS coordinator, has said the BCS must decide this year on whether changes will be made to its format because of upcoming television negotiations regarding post-2010 bowl games.

and it’s pretty obvious what’s driving the D-1 football postseason train right now.

So here are three questions to ponder over the next few years as this gets wrestled over:

How much leverage do the non-BCS conferences have in shaping this debate?

How badly do Fox and Disney want a D-1 football playoff?

How concerned are the presidents and commissioners in the BCS conferences about not killing the golden goose?